World Wide Whack

About

The hip-hop polymath built a reputation on witty freestyles that befitted her Philadelphia roots, then broke through in 2017 with “MUMBO JUMBO,” a purposefully unintelligible trap ditty that brought new resonance to the term “mumble rap” with a Grammy-nominated video that should come with a warning for those with dentophobia. Her debut album, 2018’s <i>Whack World</i>, crammed an LP’s worth of ideas into the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee: 15 sharp, surrealist minute-long tracks that veered from slapstick vocal hijinks to straight-ahead spitting, each accompanied by its own micro music video. The world Whack built was carnival-esque, all funhouse mirrors and sensory overload, with a darkness lingering at the edges. Aside from a trio of three-song EPs (the tentatively titled <i>Rap?</i>, <i>Pop?</i>, and <i>R&B?</i>) released in 2021, Whack kept a puzzlingly low profile in the years that followed. The colorful critical darling who’d had so much to say in so little time had more or less gone quiet. Then, six years after <i>Whack World</i>, she announced <i>WORLD WIDE WHACK</i>, billed as the rapper’s real full-length debut. Early videos continued the high-concept ideas and cartoonish costumes, but listen awhile and you heard something new: naked vulnerability, almost shocking in its rawness. “I can show you how it feels when you lose what you love,” Whack sing-songs on the twinkling “27 CLUB,” looking like a cross between Pierrot the clown and Bootsy Collins. The hook was one word, drawn out into a wistful melody: “Suiciiiiide…” In other words, there’s more to Whack’s world than you might expect. (“Might look familiar, but I promise you don’t know me,” she reminds you on the minute-and-change “MOOD SWING.”) Over the 15 songs of <i>WORLD WIDE WHACK</i>, the rapper grapples with real life, where echoes of abandonment and instances of suicidal ideation coexist with bursts of cockiness, uncertainty, lust, loneliness. The constant is her voice, thoughtful and brimming with ideas as ever. “BURNING BRAINS” is an expression of depressive thinking filtered through Whack’s imagistic lens: “Soup too hot, ice too cold, grass too green, sky too blue.” And there’s a great deal of whimsy, too, as on “SHOWER SONG,” a space-funk bop on the joys of singing in the bathroom.

via Apple Music